From Lalitaji to ...?

We all knew Lalitaji, with her trademark bindi, white and blue sarees and obsession with Surf. Shes been replaced years ago but by who exactly? Most women (and men) in Indian ads these days live in a cultural vacuum, with little that places them in any identifiable social context. A sign of progress or a disaster in waiting, in a country still obsessed with culture?
Shephali Bhatt

Circa 1984: A certain Lalitaji exulted about her son's half-pants scheduled to last another season thanks to her new detergent. Thus she advised, "Surf ki kharidaari mein hi samajhdaari hai." The saree she wore was indisputably white and you couldn't miss the red round bindi on her forehead. More than half a decade later: Mandira Bedi boasted of her son's academic and sport skills in an ad for Bournvita ending with, "Extra energy ke liye hai Bournvita." Advertising travelled from eastmancolour to the technicolour era by then, but the saree and bindi on the mother's forehead stayed intact. Enter the present day: The mother using Surf Excel wears trousers and the mother giving Bournvita to her child, races him wearing track pants. Not that Indian styles of dressing have completely gone off screen but the subtle visual attributes of a woman's attire that made her look Indian or placed her in a cultural context, are slowly receding. Minority religions seldom, if ever, had a role except in the montage films in Indian advertising. But now even the subtle traces of state identity like the Bengali Taant sari or a Benarasi silk to say nothing of hoary cultural cues such as tikas or a bindi have disappeared. And this in a country that quite literally wears its culture on its sleeve and loses no opportunity in showcasing it to the world at large. Case in point when Prince Charles visited a village in Jodhpur (2010), he was welcomed with a small bindi/tika (red dot) on his forehead, as a symbol of respect. Pretty much every foreign visitor boasts of a dot or a garland it's in fact part of the welcome package at several five star hotels. So where does all the culture go when it comes to advertising? Why do most of the women in ads look like they could pass off as Latin American or Caucasian simply because their appearance is devoid of any specifically Indian cultural cues? Sunil Kataria, COO - sales, marketing and SAARC at Godrej Consumer Products attributes this change to what he calls 'eve-o-lution'. He reasons that with female literacy rate going up by 25% in the last decade and more women joining the workforce, women's physical appearance is becoming more culture-agnostic. Which is why, Chennai, a city where women were predominantly presumed to be wearing sarees, sees a lot of them in salwar suits these days. "This new evolved appearance is getting reflected in today's advertising as well," says Kataria. And if any cultural dimensions have to be brought out in an ad, it's being conveyed through character nuances and not necessarily by latching onto the physical appearance of an archetypal Indian person. Alyque Padamsee, ad veteran and the brain behind Lalitaji is interestingly enough happy with

this change. "It's time we dropped the bindi and the sindoor that are signs of our handcuffing to the past," he says. Financial independence has made women an important target group: a homemaker who's also a decision maker. Advertisers have finally woken up to the newage Indian woman, he notes. Social mores aside, money is also a factor. Soaring media costs and the pressure to optimise return on investment results in more pan-India roll out of campaigns. Centering a character in a particular cultural context could actually be counterproductive if it doesn't resonate in other regions. Which is why many marketers from Unilever to Micromax in most cases opt for a culture neutral 'aspirational' (as defined by Western) sensibility in their advertising. International brands have an even bigger challenge which is to maximise the transferability of a campaign across as many regions as possible. Says Shubhranshu Das, executive director at research agency, Ipsos, "Large MNCs prefer their brands, especially in the personal care category, to have a consistent brand imagery across geographies." A 2010 Ipsos study states that 34% of the time, an ad for a brand can be aired 'as is' in the second country and perform strongly. Apparently, to most brands, it doesn't make a difference if the woman in an ad looks Indian, as long as the content of the ad resonates with the consumer and highlights the product benefit. Perhaps that explains why we have Southeast Asian women selling mobile handsets in some commercials these days! There's more to this than meets the eye. Devdutt Pattanaik, chief belief officer at Future Group believes most of these companies are European to whom anything remotely cultural in the Indian context is seen as religious and they have stringent rules against such iconography in their ads across the globe. He also counters the "new age woman" argument. "These ads featuring your aspirational woman are aired during soap operas like Diya Aur Baati Hum which are watched by women in a million households." If the aspirational look cut across to soap operas, Pattanaik is confident they'll get no TRPs. In that case, are marketing teams in India talking to the consumer or to their bosses who are often in a different country or maybe even continent? There are still some brands that are comfortable being Indian and not universal. Sameer Satpathy, EVP and marketing head of consumer products at Marico, for instance, doesn't believe that wearing a mangalsutra contradicts a woman's modern outlook. "A lot of time goes into studying how women interpret modernity even in a conservative setup. There are subtle changes in their dressing which keeps us from going too traditional in depicting women in Marico's ads," he avers. For Satpathy, the consumer might not be traditional but is definitely culturally rooted and the aim is to make the ads relevant to them. Before you decide which side you'd want your brand to be on, please note that what is culturally agnostic is essentially western. But that's also a culture. So, nothing is culture-agnostic, so to speak. Pattanaik is curious whether this shift is owing to a customer pull or borne out of corporate push alone. Frankly, we're wondering as well.

Why Warren Buffett Bailed on India

India has long been viewed as a value investors dream: rapid growth, 1.2 billion people pining for a taste of globalisation, and underdeveloped industries ripe for turnarounds. So it surprised few when the genres guru, Warren Buffett, placed a bet on the worlds ninth-biggest economy. What did come as a surprise was last weeks decision by the billionaires Berkshire Hathaway to give up on Indias insurance market after just two years. Adding to the drama, the withdrawal came the same week India unveiled plans to open the economy as never before to FDI. Buffett isnt alone. Walmart, ArcelorMittal and Posco are pulling back on investments that they had announced with great fanfare. Whats scaring foreigners away? A rampant political dysfunction that has stopped Indias progress cold. Headwinds from New Delhi are contributing to the slowest growth rates in a decade, a record current account deficit and a 7.9% plunge in the rupee this year. Foreign-direct investment slid about 21% last fiscal. The problem is an Indian government that wont get out of its own way. The long debate over foreign-investment limits says it all. In September 2012, Manmohan Singhs government passed a law allowing big retailers to open stores directly, yet no one has. Reasons are legion: too many prerequisites; constraints on whom goods can be purchased from; a raft of regulations limiting franchise models and factory construction; and the hairpulling need to negotiate separately with each of the states. Big Fizzle India has fallen into a self-destructive pattern of relenting on big issues, then killing would-be investors with the details. Take the experience of Ikea. Not content with the Swedish icon investing $2 billion, the government played hardball. It tried to bar Ikea from selling food in stores; Ikea stood its ground. But the damage was done. Executives fully expect to have to navigate Indias bad infrastructure, rigid and often unskilled labour markets, red tape and official corruption. Theyre less keen on tripping over the fine print of vaguely written laws and local power brokers with agendas at odds with New Delhi. Headlinemaking disputes involving household names like Ikea, Walmart and Berkshire dont help Indias image. Worse, the uncertainty is breeding a huge trust deficit. On July 17, India moved to open important sectors such as defence, power and telecommunications to foreign investment. Its heralded as the nations big bang. Big fizzle is more like it, as big inflows are likely to continue eluding India. Any major foreign investor cannot ignore the experience of Vodafone, which is still wondering if it will take a multibillion-dollar loss on a deal, thanks to tax-policy changes. Its time for the government to stop squandering Indias potential. The lack of transparency and reliability makes it virtually impossible to consider long-term investments. What should India do? Pass clear and strong investment laws that will survive the change of government and offer a code of conduct for state leaders. India must strengthen the rule of law as it applies to foreigners so theyll trust their money is safe. Finally, India must think long-term. Todays motivation for inviting more foreign money is to narrow the current-account deficit. The goal should be to raise competitiveness, gain fresh knowledge and create better-paying jobs for the future. India is proving that size doesnt guarantee its inevitable rise. Only true economic reform, political openness and more proactive leadership will do that and get the Buffetts of the world to come to India and stay. Bloomberg

Scrap AFSPA, Save India

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act is a problem for Indias democratic core, not just its periphery

Scrap the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), not only to resolve the conflicts in Jammu and Kashmir and the north-east but also as part of reversing an ongoing weakening of the countrys democratic institutions. The short point: AFSPA is not a problem that affects the periphery alone, it is something that weakens Indias democratic core. AFSPA is a leftover from the Raj, designed to place the stamp of the law on what would, in all normal circumstances, be labelled extra-judicial killings and other violations of fundamental rights. Learned judges, former policemen and liberal academics, besides activists, have repeatedly recommended that this particular colonial derelict be scrapped altogether or altered drastically to bring it in line with the framework of a functional democracy. The armed forces have been steadfast in their resistance to any proposal to repeal this law that gives them the power of life and death over ordinary citizens in areas brought under the Acts purview, with no questions asked. And the inability of the countrys civilian leadership to override the resistance of the armed forces is part and parcel of the overall weakening of political authority that today threatens to unravel Indias democratic state. Sure enough, it is pointless to blame the armed forces or the politicians alone in this regard. Equally at fault are other actors. A middle class guided by a narrow vision of its own selfinterest. A relatively lazy and incompetent media that fails to put in the hard work needed to understand reality in its complexity and plumps, instead, for the shortcut of zeroing in on one, any one, sensational dimension of the problem to be reported. Democracy Under Threat Constitutional bodies like the Comptroller and Auditor General that hunt for populist glory rather than serve out their assigned job of providing inputs to committees of Parliament that would hold the executive to account. Civil servants who find easy refuge in institutionalised absence of accountability. And the courts that take blithe advantage of missing specific constitutional restraint to foray into areas far beyond their competence and comprehension, a tendency deplored by sections of the judiciary itself. The continuing revelations on how Ishrat Jahan was killed in cold blood, along with three others, in a joint operation by the Gujarat police and the Intelligence Bureau, tell a tale, among other things, of degradation of Indian democracy. Men in uniform can kill off anyone, just about anyone, provided they take the trouble to fabricate a charge of threatening the authority and integrity of the Indian state. There is no institutional mechanism in place to check their behaviour, save vigilance of the courts. When our armed forces can kill, rape, torture, maim and heap indignities on ordinary people, under the cover of a law that gives them absolute impunity, and when policemen can bump off whom they like in staged encounters, are we really a democracy? Does the political system that tolerates such cold-blooded murder of people by agencies of the state have any right to present itself to the world as its largest democracy?

This is not a debate in political classification or about the foolishness of seeking a middle ground in binary choices, like suggesting that someone is a little pregnant. That would be like worrying about the chastity of a rape victim assaulted savagely enough to bring out her entrails, as in the infamous Delhi rape of December 2012. What Holds India Together Liberal democracy is what allows India to be. With its enormous diversity, multiple group identities of caste, religion, region, ethnicity and language, India is still a functional entity only because its organising principle is democracy. If democracy comes unstuck, so will India. Doesnt this claim run counter to our historical experience? After all, India has existed for millennia without the aid of democracy, hasnt it? No, it has not. India has existed as a place of shared culture and history and intertwined belief systems, but not as a cohesive nation-state. That is a strictly modern phenomenon. How India can Unravel And, for its myriad, diverse and often mutually antagonistic constituents to cohere together as a nation, India needs democracy as its operating framework. Trying anything else would cause extreme disruption, as some group or the other seeks noninstitutional means to right a deemed wrong. Institutional means of shared, transparent decision-making is the only way all of the countrys diverse groups can feel they are getting their legitimate due within the larger collective and that the advance of the larger collective is indeed to their own advantage. And that institutional framework of shared, transparent decision-making is democracy, currently under assault from diverse quarters, of which AFSPA represents one. Let us stop the pretence that AFSPA is all about the periphery. The law, in conjunction with other processes, is bleeding the core of Indias already anaemic democracy. Let us scrap AFSPA.